The Hornes: An American Family.

BUCKLEY, Gail Lumet.

$850.00

Item Number: 141137

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

First edition of this history of the Horne dynasty, spanning eight generations. Octavo, original half cloth, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Joan + John – With best wishes – Gail June, 1986.” The recipients, American journalists Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne met in the late 1950s when Didion was working for Vogue. They were soon married and both picked up writing work from book publishers and magazines, traveled together on journalism assignments, and established a working pattern that served for the next 40 years. They had a constant advising, consulting, and editing collaboration. Critically acclaimed bestselling books followed for each, including Dunne’s The Studio and Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Didion’s work, in particular, engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, California culture, and California history. Writing at the same time Bradlee was acting as executive editor of The Washington Post, Didion gained a reputation as a pioneer of the New Journalism style of news writing and recognition for her sensational novels, including her first nonfiction book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of magazine pieces about her experiences in California. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Lorraine Louie. From the library of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne.

Through the story of her own extraordinary family, Lena Horne's daughter gives us a fascinating, intimate look into "America's historic family secret," the black bourgeoisie: that network of families who for a century, from the Emancipation to the Civil Rights Movement, served as black America's ambassadors to white America; met on the campuses of such colleges of Fisk, Howard, and Atlanta universities; and wielded influence in government, journalism and education.